SIX (13 page)

“You are impossible! I can’t do this anymore.”

He stands there, taking the assault with a blank expression on his stupid, beautiful face.

“You shouldn’t waste food.” He catches a bun mid-air and begins eating it.

“You’re scared to get close, I get it, but I’m not and I hate feeling alone, so if you’re not going to fill that void, then you need to let me find someone who will,”

I say on a defeated breath, a sigh lifting my shoulders.

My feelings for him are only becoming more intense the more he shows me he wants me too, but his own stubbornness isn’t going to let us be together and all this emotion and back and forth is eating away at my energy and spirit.

I’m suffocating. My lungs restrict me from gaining air.

He’s killing me. I’d give him everything, but he can’t see past his own view of himself.

His face cracks, his jaw ticks, and his eyes lower to his feet, but that’s the only response he gives me.

Watching Emma build mud pies in Parker’s garden, the sun shining against her skin, a smile graces my lips.

I lay out, hoping to catch some color.

I’d been lacking vitamin D after locking myself away when I wasn’t working.

Six had been playing on my mind too much and it was becoming too hard to be in the same room with him, so I took a week off and drove up to my aunt’s to drop some of my dad’s stuff off to her.

The whole time I was away, I constantly wondered what he was doing—or
whom
he was doing.

I hadn’t seen him with anyone in a while, but I wasn’t around him much, so I wouldn’t know either way.

The thought still felt crippling.

The condensation on the side of my glass trickles over my fingers and I panic for a split second thinking it’s a bug.

That’s the thing with this unforgiving heat, it came with flying critters.

My eyes roam over an old shed standing on a slant at the end of the pathway and then move to the yard.

The grass is too long and needs to be cut.

Parker’s voice gets louder and she becomes more animated, her hands flailing around.

She’d been on the phone with Emma’s dad for the past half hour.

“You’re a piece of shit, Daryl! Eventually, she’s going to be old enough to know you’re blowing her off.” Slamming her cell onto the little table separating our chairs, she drops her head into her hands.

“Are you okay?” I ask, taking my sunglasses off and leaning over to rub my palm down her arm.

“No,” she sighs, looking up at me and then to Emma playing.

“She doesn’t deserve this—him. He used to be here every weekend, then it was every other, then once a month. Now, she’s lucky if she sees him on holidays.”

“She has you,” I tell her.

Emma is a happy child and Parker is trying her best. It’s all anyone can do.

“Six had to loan me money,” she whispers, fidgeting with her hands.

“What?”

“I didn’t have rent money. Daryl didn’t pay child support this month and I was depending on it.”

“Well, as long as you have it now.”

“He won’t let me pay him back and I feel like I’m taking advantage of his generosity. He’s my boss.”

“He’s also your friend, and despite what he may think, he’s a total kid person and he’s fond of Emma. He wouldn’t want where you live to be at risk. Just accept his kindness.”

“He asked me about you,” she blurts.

“Asked you what about me?” I ask, sitting more forward.

“Where you went, if anyone was with you, if you’re seeing anyone…”

“Urgh, why does he care?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

Throwing myself back into the seat and placing my sunglasses back into place on the bridge of my nose, I huff, “Is it? He isn’t interested in going there with me, he makes that clear, so I don’t understand him.”

She pours us both another drink. “Girl, I don’t understand any man.”

Her gate opens and an older version of herself walks through it.

“Grandma’s here,” she announces, and Emma drops her mud and goes running toward her, arms stretched wide.

“Time for work?” I ask Parker, bummed the day is already over.

“Looks like it.”

I’m dreading work tonight because I need to get Six to sign some paperwork for me and that means being alone with him at the end of the night.

Sighing and stretching my limbs to prepare myself for getting up, I take one more look around the peace of the yard and ignore the flutter in my stomach at knowing I’m going to see him.

My stupid hormones don’t match my thoughts.

“Bye, Emma.” I finger wave, making my way through the gate to my car to give Parker some privacy with her mom and to say goodbye to Emma.

“You’ve put it off for as long as you can,” Parker teases as she gets her jacket.

It was a busy night and the time flew by.

Now, everyone’s shift is over and I’m left to close up the office and check in with Six to make sure he’s signed the right documents.

“That’s not the exit,” I deadpan as she makes her way through to the shop where Lucky’s drawing up a design for a client due in for a long sitting tomorrow.

She pokes her tongue out at me before disappearing through the door.

Sighing, I stare at the office where Six is sitting behind a desk, looking at the paperwork I left there for him.

I take slow steps and hang by the doorframe for a few silent beats before the silence just makes me grow hotter and stormier while butterflies batter my insides.

He squints at the documents and I enter the office.

“Everything okay?”

“I don’t know. What do you want me to do?”

“I just need your signature.”

“Oh.” He grabs a pen and jots his name down.

I move the paper from in front of him and place down another, pointing to the bottom where he has to sign, and repeat the process until I have what I need.

“That’s it,” I tell him.

“Great, now you can go back to avoiding me.” He chucks the pen down and pushes the chair back as he stands with more force than warranted.

“Me?” I scream, my anger and frustration finally boiling over.

He doesn’t stop his retreat, but screw him.

I give chase and I don’t know what possesses me, but I grab one of the glasses left out and launch it at him before he can leave.

It shatters off the wall and rains down in front of him.

His entire frame stiffens and slowly turns.

Fear chokes me and I start to backpedal.

What the hell was I thinking?

“It slipped,” I squeak out.

“Across the room? Is it possessed?” he growls.

“You deserved it,” I say, standing straighter while pausing my movement.

“How’s that?”

“I can’t do this,” I whine.

I feel like a broken record, but I’m sick of repeating myself and this dance we have going on.

“Just stop punishing us both when you know you want me as much as I want you.” I push the words past my lips, laying it all out there for him.

I may sound like a horny teenager who thinks a lot of herself, but he knows it’s not that.

“I don’t want you and you can’t seem to get that through your head.”

“Bullshit,” I snap.

“It’s not bullshit. You’re not my type.”

“I’m everyone’s type,” I bite back.

He’s spitting poison as a defence mechanism and I’m not going to let him batter my confidence.

He smirks at my words.

“I can’t love you, Mist, and that’s what you want.”

“Don’t assume to know what I want.”

“You want me and it’s not going to happen.”

“Then when I decide to date, and it will happen soon, if you dare scare them off or make remarks, I will quit and I’ll be gone. I mean it.”

“Date whoever you like. I was just looking out for my bar manager, don’t get it twisted.”

“Fuck you.”

“I think we’ve established that’s not going to happen.”

It hurts more than I thought it would, and the worst part is I know he’s lying to both of us.

Breathing takes everything I’m made of and even that is crumbling with every inhale.

My mouth gasps on words I can’t verbalize so I stop trying and just shrug in defeat.

Walking away, I try to keep the tears from falling and take one last glance back at him before disappearing through to the back room where I left my purse and all the lights on.

It fucking hurts.

My insides burn like acid with each step she takes, gaining space from me.

My soul reaches out, trying to attach itself to hers, but I don’t move.

I let ice form over her heart and hate race through her mind from my words.

She needs to hate me because I’m too weak to keep telling her no.
Leave
, my mind screams at me, but I can’t fucking move.

My soul and head are at war and my cock is joining forces with the choice that makes me stay and give her everything she’s been wanting from me.

I don’t know what a normal girl like her could ever see in a man as messed up as I am.

I was a sex fiend, a murderer, a man still caught up in the mind of a kid half of the time because I never got to be one.

Yet, she sees something in me worthy of her affection, and I don’t know if that makes her more fucked up than me.